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Backgrounder Population of Tibet
[WTN-L World Tibet Network News. Published by The Canada Tibet Committee. Issue ID: 02/09/04; Sepember 4, 2002.]
[Offiial news agency of the PRC]
LHASA, Sept. 4, 2002 (Xinhua) -- Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region is home to the greatest concentration of the country's Tibetan people.
Statistics show that the number of Tibetans in Tibet has grown steadily since the region's peaceful liberation in 1951. Tibetans have always made up over 90 percent of local population.
Tibet's government recorded a total population of one million in 1953 when China held the first national census, according to the data provided by the Lhasa-based Archives of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The archives house more than three million historical and official documents and other data on Tibet dating from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).
Tibet's population was 1.3467 million in 1964 (the second national census), 1.8923 million in 1982 (the third census), 2.196 million in 1990 (the fourth census), and 2.6163 million in 2000 (the fifth census).
The result of the fifth census shows 2.41 million Tibetans in Tibet, who make up 92.2 percent of the region's total population.
The rest include Han people and other ethnic nationalities.